BS'D

Two points are raised by Rabbi Lord Jonathon Sacks in an interview quoted and linked below; 

• Where did we write our esthetic music? To tell people what the life of faith actually does to you. 

• The issue of 90%+ losing Jews on campus, all be it we have a minyan etc there (read below)

 

The issue of not having much in the way of our esthetic art, is what prevents making strides on campus in particular.

This is what Paper Gun the Operetta was created for.

 

Pauls / Pinchas’s aims to perform it at universities, among other places – Kiruv as "the affective dimension, with the emotional esthetic" from the Jewish soul. The reason Paper Gun the Operetta fits the bill is perhaps well represented in "All laughs, no smile" (on this page). ​The Operetta as a whole represents a journey from a familiar disappointment in the secular; extreme paradoxes of the politically non observant, to balance in and the golden mean of the Torah. Rejecting secular duplicity in going towards an observant one, is what is in the combined work of "Paper Gun" represents.

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"the affective dimension, with the emotional esthetic" is in authentic human experience for people who don't have it, especially in today's digital world."

Jacob Applebaum

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Paul regularly performs his show of “the six decades of the Jewish songwriters”, and now ​this originals work as an Operetta.

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Pleaser email me for booking information

alan@babytosh.com

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RABBI LORD SACKS INTERVIEW:

https://rabbisacks.org/archive/behind-the-bima/

 

QUESTION to Rabbi Sacks

"What could the orthodox community spend time on that is being overlooked, apart from appropriately so, more Talmud Torah, chesed, activism, social justice. Is the orthodox community neglecting anything."

 

ANSWER

"I ment Avrom Yoshua Heschel, author of “G-d in search of man”, grandson of the Abter Rov, he was a poet of the spirit, and wasn’t really a philosopher. And so I think there are two things we are missing:

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• All that goes with the “affective” dimension of Judaism, the emotional life.

There is some nice Jewish music, but some of the most popular is actually non-Jewish pop set to Jewish words, sang acappella – which is great, I love it. But I like to see music coming from the Jewish soul. So I think we haven’t done enough with the “affective” dimension. And music is probably the most important, I mean we wrote everyone else’s music, Irving Berlin wrote I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”, Mahler’s 8thsymphony is a catholic mass. Where did we write our music? To tell people what the life of faith actually does to you. 

 

• And the other thing is, and I absolutely think modern orthodoxy is missing out on this badly, is kiruv. And the reason I say this is because the difference between a material and physical possession is, that with a material one the more you share the less you have, when it comes to a spiritual one the opposite. And that is why Chabad can send people out to where there is no Yiddishkeit, where you and I would lose our Yiddishkeit overnight almost, because there is no support system, and yet they keep it, why? Because they’re busy sharing it.

Modern orthodox people should be going out on campuses. Do you know how many Jews we lose on campus, 90% minimum. On every campus you’ll find a nice modern orthodox minyan, davening three times a day, daf yomi, everything la/mahadrin. But they’re not taking it out to people who don’t have it. (and I'd say even harder to do in modern times). And when you don’t give something in your spirit dies."​​​